Standard Oil of Ohio

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The Standard Oil Company (Ohio)
Company type Public (1911–1987)
  • NYSE: SOH (1911–1986)
  • NYSE: SRD (1986–1987) [1]
Industry Petroleum
Founded1911 (1911)
Founder John D. Rockefeller
Defunct1987;37 years ago (1987) [2]
FateAcquired by BP
SuccessorBP America Inc.
Headquarters
Cleveland
Products Gasoline, motor oils
Brands
  • Boron (1954–1991) [3]
  • Sohio (1928–1991) [3]

The Standard Oil Company (Ohio) was an American petroleum company that existed from 1870 to 1987. The company, known commonly as Sohio, was founded by John D. Rockefeller. [4] [2] It was established as one of the separate entities created after the 1911 breakup.

Contents

In the 1960s, The Standard Oil Company partnered with BP, in the development of the Prudhoe Bay, Alaska petroleum reserves and the construction of the Trans Alaska pipeline. The complex partnership called for a gradual stock acquisition until BP would eventually gain controlling interest culminating in total acquisition of the American company. The company ceased operations in 1987, although BP continued to sell gasoline under the 'Sohio' brand until 1991. [2]

History

Under the name "The Standard Oil Company (Ohio)", the company was established as a separate business after the antitrust breakup the oil conglomerate's monopoly in 1911. It operated service stations under the 'Sohio' brand name in Ohio but was prohibited in using the 'Standard' name in other states. In nearby states, it used the Boron brand name (introduced in 1954) [3] instead, but with an otherwise-similar logo. Wallace Trevor Holliday was President of the company from 1928 to 1949 and Chairman of the Board from 1949 until his death on November 7, 1950.

In 1968, Sohio's CEO, Charles E. (Charlie) Spahr, arranged a merger with BP. It was announced as Standard's acquisition of BP's North American interests in exchange for BP receiving 25% of Sohio's stock. [5] However, the contract included a stipulation that BP would assume majority interest when Standard's share of production from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska reached 600,000 barrels per day (95,000 m3/d). That occurred in 1978, and BP then took control of Standard Oil. [6] The U.S. operations were unified under the BP America corporate name.[ when? ]

By 1991, BP had rebranded all Sohio and Boron retail stations as 'BP', [7] [8] [9] except for some marine fuel outlets.[ citation needed ]

In 2011, a BP station in Steubenville, Ohio that had originally opened as a Sohio station in 1946 ended fuel sales and was restored to 1970s vintage Sohio colors as a museum for Sohio. The site has vintage (non-working) Sohio pumps and other Sohio memorabilia. The garage itself remains active. [10]

Stations

By 1980, Sohio and Boron had 3,400 gas stations in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia.[ citation needed ] Sohio acquired 5,660 former Gulf stations as a result of FTC anti-trust limitations in Chevron's 1985 takeover of Gulf. These stations, bought for $1 billion, were in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina. [11] [12] Sohio was allowed to use the "Gulf" name for five years after the acquisition.[ citation needed ]

BP continues to sell marine fuel under the Sohio brand at various marinas on Ohio waterways and in Ohio state parks in order to protect its rights in the Sohio and Standard Oil names. The Anderson Ferry Marina near Cincinnati, Ohio as of 2005 Sohio anderson ferry marina.jpg
BP continues to sell marine fuel under the Sohio brand at various marinas on Ohio waterways and in Ohio state parks in order to protect its rights in the Sohio and Standard Oil names. The Anderson Ferry Marina near Cincinnati, Ohio as of 2005

By the end of 1985, all other Standard Oil descendants had minimized use of the name Standard, following Standard Oil of Indiana renaming itself Amoco earlier in the year as well as Chevron's aforementioned merger with Gulf that same year that led to its official corporate name to change from Standard Oil of California to Chevron Corporation. As a result, The Standard Oil Company (Ohio) corporately rebrand itself in 1986 under the Standard name, while continuing to use the Sohio brand in Ohio. [13] [1] In 1987, BP bought the 45% of Sohio it did not already own for $7.82 Billion and assumed control. [14] Among the first changes was the rebranding of all Sohio, Boron, & Gulf stations that it owned to 'BP' in 1991. [9] Among the conversions included former Mobil stations in Western Pennsylvania (including Pittsburgh) that Standard of Ohio acquired in 1987 when Mobil left that market, most of which had just rebranded as Boron when they were converted to BP. [15] From 1989 to 1991, many Sohio, Boron and Gulf stations used BP's color scheme of green and yellow during the transitional rebranding to BP. [16]

The Boron name was used outside of Ohio in neighboring states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and West Virginia. Boron was also the branding of its premium grade gasoline along with its regular grade fuel "Extron" (formerly "Ex-tane" later "Octron") and its unleaded version "Cetron" introduced in 1970.[ citation needed ]

Standard Oil's motor oil brands included Boron, Sohio, Cetron, CHD, Duron, Multron, Nitrex, Nitron, Octron, Premex, and Qvo.

Sohio's credit cards, like other oil company cards at the time, could be used at competitors' stations outside the issuing company's competitive territory, which in Sohio's case was Ohio.[ original research? ] The benefit died with the Sohio brand. Exxon had a similar arrangement as well.[ original research? ] In 1916, Sohio introduced a prefabricated canopy prototype for its stations. [17] Although Sohio gas stations have ceased to exist, a few marina gas stations on Lake Erie and the Ohio River still[ when? ] bear the Sohio name.[ citation needed ]

When BP merged with Amoco in 1998, its American headquarters moved from the former BP America Building on Public Square in Cleveland to Chicago. [18] Its American headquarters have since moved to the Houston Energy Corridor in Houston, Texas, in line with the corporate offices of Shell and fellow Standard spinoffs ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil.

Subsidiaries

Hospitality Motor Inns

Hospitality Motor Inns, a wholly owned Sohio subsidiary, operated 11 motor inns in Ohio and surrounding states [19] The company was formed in 1963 as a Sohio subsidiary. Hospitality became a publicly held company when Sohio sold off 51% of the company to the public. Sohio sold its remaining interest of the chain to Hosmin, Inc., in 1978. [20]

ProCare

In the 1980s, as many gas stations began converting their vehicle service bays into convenience stores, Sohio wished to continue performing auto maintenance by launching a specialty auto repair shop. Called Sohio ProCare, these shops were often located near Sohio stations that now had convenience stores instead of auto service and were more specialized compared to traditional auto garages located at gas stations. The locations were mostly in Ohio, but Sohio did expand the concept into Pennsylvania and North Carolina, where they were known as "Boron ProCare". Also, unlike many Sohio stations, the ProCare locations were owned and operated directly by Sohio. Commercials for ProCare often featured M*A*S*H actor Gary Burghoff as "That Sohio Guy", as part of a larger Sohio advertising campaign featuring Burghoff. [21] Burghoff himself would stay with BP for a time as a spokesperson after BP converted Sohio and its other brands to BP.

BP retained ProCare following its absorption of Sohio, rebranding it as "BP ProCare" and changing the colors in its logo to match BP. BP continued to operate it until selling off the chain to a private investment group in 1999, at which point the shops were simply called ProCare without an oil company prefix and its logo was reverted to its Sohio-era colors. [22] Following a bankruptcy under the private investment group's ownership, ProCare would ultimately be acquired by Monro Muffler Brake in 2006, and converted the locations to its own brands. [23]

Leadership

President

W. Trevor Holliday, 1928–1949
Clyde T. Foster, 1949–1957
Charles E. Spahr, 1957–1969
Alton W. Whitehouse Jr., 1970–1977
Joseph D. Harnett, 1977–1980
John R. Miller, 1980–19??

Chairman of the Board

W. Trevor Holliday, 1949–1950
Armstrong A. Stambaugh, 1950-1955
Clyde T. Foster, 1956–1961
unfilled, 1961-1969
Charles E. Spahr, 1970–1977
Alton W. Whitehouse Jr., 1978–1986
Sir Robert Horton, 1986–1987

Related Research Articles

Standard Oil is the common name for a corporate trust in the petroleum industry that existed from 1882 to 1911. The origins of the trust lay in the operations of the Standard Oil Company (Ohio), which had been founded in 1870 by John D. Rockefeller. The trust was born on January 2, 1882, when a group of 41 investors signed the Standard Oil Trust Agreement, which pooled their securities of 40 companies into a single holding agency managed by nine trustees. The original trust was valued at $70 million. On March 21, 1892, the Standard Oil Trust was dissolved and its holdings were reorganized into 20 independent companies that formed an unofficial union referred to as "Standard Oil Interests." In 1899, the Standard Oil Company acquired the shares of the other 19 companies and became the holding company for the trust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gulf Oil</span> American oil company

Gulf Oil was a major global oil company in operation from 1901 to 1985. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the Seven Sisters oil companies. Prior to its merger with Standard Oil of California, Gulf was one of the chief instruments of the Mellon family fortune; both Gulf and Mellon Financial had their headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with Gulf's headquarters, the Gulf Tower, being Pittsburgh's tallest building until the completion of the U.S. Steel Tower.

Texaco, Inc. is an American oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company until its refining operations merged into Chevron in 2001, at which time most of its station franchises were divested to Shell plc through its American division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amoco</span> American fuel station chain owned by British BP plc

Amoco is a brand of fuel stations operating in the United States and owned by British conglomerate BP since 1998. The Amoco Corporation was an American chemical and oil company, founded by Standard Oil Company in 1889 around a refinery in Whiting, Indiana, and was officially the Standard Oil Company of Indiana until 1985. Originally part of the Standard Oil Company trust, it focused on producing gasoline for the new automobile market. In 1911, as part of the break-up of the Standard Oil trust, it became an independent corporation. Incorporated in Indiana, it was headquartered in Chicago, and formally adopted the name Amoco in 1985. Amoco Corporation merged in 1998, over the course of several years all Amoco and Standard stations were converted to BP. The Amoco name was branded at the gas pump for the highest 93 octane blends. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 tarnished the BP brand in the US resulting in a rethinking of US branding. Amoco was resurrected in 2017 beyond merely being a gasoline blend, as service station owners could choose to use the Amoco brand for station branding and supplies purchased from BP in selected areas of the United States markets. This branding decision also allow for an increase in stations without flooding a particular market with a single BP name. This was consistent with marketing at Chevron and ExxonMobil and the utilization of the Chevron/Texaco and Exxon/Mobil brands.

ARCO is a brand of gasoline stations owned by Marathon Petroleum. BP, which formerly owned the brand, uses it in Northern California, Oregon and Washington, while Marathon has rights for the rest of the United States and Mexico.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Esso</span> Oil and gas company

Esso is a trading name for ExxonMobil. Originally, the name was primarily used by its predecessor Standard Oil of New Jersey after the breakup of the original Standard Oil company in 1911. The company adopted the name "Esso", to which the other Standard Oil companies would later object.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chevron Corporation</span> American multinational energy corporation

Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation predominantly specializing in oil and gas. The second-largest direct descendant of Standard Oil, and originally known as the Standard Oil Company of California, it is headquartered in San Ramon, California, and active in more than 180 countries. Within oil and gas, Chevron is vertically integrated and is involved in hydrocarbon exploration, production, refining, marketing and transport, chemicals manufacturing and sales, and power generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">200 Public Square</span> Skyscraper in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, USA

200 Public Square is a skyscraper in Cleveland, Ohio. The building, located on Public Square in Downtown Cleveland, reaches 45 stories and 658 feet (201 m) with 1.2 million square feet (110,000 m2) of office space. It is the third-tallest building in Cleveland and fourth-tallest in the state of Ohio. The building opened in 1985 as the headquarters for Standard Oil of Ohio or Sohio, and was known as the Sohio Building or Standard Oil building. After British Petroleum (BP) rebranded Sohio as BP in the early 1990s, the building was often called the BP America Building, BP America Tower, BP Tower, or BP Building, and those earlier names are still regularly used even after BP moved its North American headquarters to Chicago in 1998. It was officially renamed 200 Public Square in 2005 and since 2010, has been Cleveland's regional headquarters for Huntington Bancshares.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caltex</span> International petroleum brand owned by Chevron Corporation

Caltex is a petroleum brand name of Chevron Corporation used in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, and Southern Africa. Headquartered in Singapore, it is also the brand name of non-Chevron petroleum companies in some countries under a trademark licensing agreement with Chevron.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atlantic Petroleum</span>

Atlantic Petroleum was an oil company in the Eastern United States headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a direct descendant of the Standard Oil Trust. It was also one of the companies that merged with Richfield Oil Corporation to form the "AtlanticRichfield Co.", later known as ARCO.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humble Oil</span> Defunct American oil company

Humble Oil and Refining Co. was an American oil company founded in 1911 in Humble, Texas. In 1919, a 50% interest in Humble was acquired by the Standard Oil of New Jersey which acquired the rest of the company in September 1959. The Humble brand was used by Standard Oil of New Jersey until 1973, when the company rebranded nationwide as Exxon and discontinued Humble, along with its other brands Esso and Enco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kyso</span> Petroleum company

Kyso was an oil company, gasoline distributor, and direct descendant of Standard Oil that operated in the southeastern United States from 1886 until it was acquired by Standard Oil of California in 1961. After the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911, the company was awarded rights to run the oil operation of Kentucky, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Charles E. Spahr was the youngest person to be appointed President of Sohio. He was then appointed as CEO of Sohio from 1959 to 1977, and was instrumental in the building of the Alaskan Pipeline.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BP</span> British multinational oil and gas company

BP p.l.c. is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. It is one of the oil and gas "supermajors" and one of the world's largest companies measured by revenues and profits. It is a vertically integrated company operating in all areas of the oil and gas industry, including exploration and extraction, refining, distribution and marketing, power generation, and trading.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enco (brand)</span>

Enco was a secondary retail brand name for products of the Humble Oil Corporation in certain parts of the United States from 1960 to 1977. It was used on service stations operated by Humble in states where they were not permitted to use the Esso brand under conditions set by the court-ordered breakup of Standard Oil in 1911.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clark Brands</span>

Clark Brands, formerly Clark Oil, began as Clark's Super Gas and was a 20th-century oil company headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Gulf Oil LP is an American oil company formed when Chevron Corporation acquired the naming rights to the Gulf Oil brand in the United States for $13 billion in 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Successors of Standard Oil</span> Companies descended from Standard Oil

Following the 1911 Supreme Court ruling that found Standard Oil was an illegal monopoly, the company was broken up into 34 different entities, divided primarily by region and activity. Many of these companies later became part of the Seven Sisters, which dominated global petroleum production in the 20th century, and became a majority of today's largest investor-owned oil companies, with most tracing their roots back to Standard Oil. Some descendants of Standard Oil were also given exclusive rights to the Standard Oil name.

References

  1. 1 2 "Standard Oil to Drop Sohio". New York Times . February 25, 1986.
  2. 1 2 3 "Standard Oil Co". Ohio History Central.
  3. 1 2 3 Lyin, Dan D. (12 February 2021), "Sohio History", Dantiques.com (blog)
  4. ↑ "The Standard Oil Company; Ohio Charter No. 3675". Ohio Secretary of State. 1870-01-10. Archived from the original on 2021-06-06.
  5. ↑ Dallos, Robert E. (June 3, 1969). "Standard (Ohio) to Buy British Petroleum Unit: Standard Oil to Buy BP Subsidiary". Los Angeles Times . p. c11. ProQuest   156209799.
  6. ↑ Egan, Jack (October 19, 1978). "BP Gaining Control of Sohio". Washington Post .
  7. ↑ Caldwell, Dave (2012-12-29). 5 1989 Peg BP News. Archived from the original on 2021-12-11. Retrieved 2018-11-28– via YouTube.
  8. ↑ "Sohio name being replaced by BP after 63 years". United Press International . April 25, 1991.
  9. 1 2 "Historic Sohio name soon to be just a memory". United Press International . April 12, 1991.
  10. ↑ "Sohio in Steubenville".
  11. ↑ "Sohio to Buy Some Gulf Assets". New York Times . September 28, 1984.
  12. ↑ Potts, Mark (September 28, 1984). "Chevron, Sohio Set Deal for Gulf Assets". Washington Post .
  13. ↑ "Sohio Returns To Old Corporate Name". Associated Press . February 25, 1986.
  14. ↑ Cole, Robert J. (April 29, 1987). "B.P. In $7.82 Billion Deal for Standard". New York Times .
  15. ↑ "Mobil Sells 28 Stations". Toledo Blade . December 30, 1987. p. 18 – via Google News Archive.
  16. ↑ "5 1989 Peg BP News". YouTube .
  17. ↑ "The History of Gasoline Retailing", National Association of Convenience Stores, February 2, 2011, archived from the original on 2011-03-24
  18. ↑ Zajac, Andrew (August 16, 1998). "In Cleveland, Few Gasps at BP's Leaving". Chicago Tribune .
  19. ↑ Gallaher, Mary Jane (October 1971). "A Career in Hospitality" (PDF). The Sohioan. Vol. 43, no. 5. The Standard Oil Company. p. 18. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-02. Retrieved 2015-03-04– via dantiques.com (blog).
  20. ↑ Campbell v. Hospitality Motor Inns, Inc., 493 N.E.2d 239 (Ohio1986).
  21. ↑ [ dead link ]
  22. ↑ "Bp Amoco Sheds Procare in Sale to Investor Group". 31 May 2005.
  23. ↑ "Monro Muffler Brake to Acquire Assets of ProCare Automotive Service Solutions Out of Bankruptcy". 6 March 2006.
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